INTRODUCING: Fire At The Plantation House
“How meticulous was it? Pretty goddamn meticulous!” laughs John Angel, aka the mastermind behind the progressive death metal entity that is FIRE AT THE PLANTATION HOUSE. He’s just been hit with what in hindsight is a bit of a silly question about the complexity of the process by which he created his debut album Southampton Insurrection – a near 50-minute concept album he has written, recorded and is now promoting entirely himself. “I was like ‘fuck it, I’m just gonna cross this bucket list item off my list’,” he explains of the project’s inception, which came shortly after his previous band fell apart. “That was 2018 when I made that decision, and here we are.”
Even beyond some of the obvious reasons for such a long gestation period – like the pandemic and the time it took Angel to assemble a home studio – Southampton Insurrection was always going to require a lot of work. As if the intricacy of the music itself wasn’t enough, its influences drawn everywhere from Angel’s education in classical music to his love of bands like LAMB OF GOD and BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME, it also tells and embellishes the true story of Nat Turner’s Rebellion of August 1831 as Angel reckons with the United States’ history of racial injustice, its persistence today, and his own place as a person of privilege seeking to effect positive change.
“I wrote the bones of the story before I started writing music,” he elaborates. “Because I wanted the music to reflect what was happening – as much as you can with death metal and stuff. I feel like that’s something that maybe not enough bands do… a lot of time it’s just like they write the album and it sounds really cool and the pacing is great, but then the story isn’t necessarily reflected in the music.”
This is borne out especially in Angel’s use of leitmotifs and the careful attention paid to how different melodies and themes appear and reappear throughout the album. Perhaps the most crucial is the slave spiritual Go In The Wilderness – a song that has been theorised to have been used to call clandestine meetings among slaves, and that some suggest may have even been used by Nat Turner himself. It appears in various forms throughout the record, including in a fairly faithful reproduction towards the end, this as mentioned being just one of many influences that give the album such broad sonic scope.
“I didn’t worry too much about what I wanted the sound to be,” offers Angel on how he keeps it all cohesive. “It was sort of just like whatever comes out is what’s supposed to come out. I was talking to my therapist about it years ago and I still remember this conversation, I was like ‘I don’t really feel like I’m writing it right now. I feel more like I’m slowly uncovering what it’s supposed to be’. There was some quality control, I’m not trying to sit here and be like ‘I’m a fucking genius, everything that pours out of my hands and mouth is brilliant’, but I was kind of approaching it like ‘I’m just gonna make the record that I want to make.’”
Of course, Angel is keenly aware that his use of slave spirituals, and indeed his telling of the entire story, could see him credibly accused of cultural appropriation, which is why he has chosen donate 50% of all proceeds from sales of and related to Southampton Insurrection to Feed The People Collective – a grassroots, Black-led mutual aid organisation based in occupied Ohlone territory – aka San Francisco – that seeks to provide healthy meals and culinary know-how to those in need in the area.
“I really felt that I had to do something like this because I am a white man and I took a piece of music and a story that comes from the time when Black people were enslaved in the country and I made a piece of art that I always intended to sell,” he explains. “I had gone to some Feed The People Collective events and I was like ‘this is the organisation’. I know the people, they’re good people and I’ve seen how it works.”
So it’s ‘progressive’ death metal in more ways than one perhaps. Of course Angel hopes that people think Southampton Insurrection is “fucking sick” and that they are impressed that he did it all himself, but he also genuinely wants to challenge his listeners, to make them consider their place in the world, and especially what they might do to help dismantle the systems of injustice and oppression that still shape it today.
“From a socio-political standpoint, if you’re a white person and you listen to the record I want you to come away with a desire to reflect on the way the world is,” he concludes. “Especially the United States and how it came to be in this fucked up state and how you can make it better. If you’re a Black person and you’re listening to the record, I’m not telling you anything that your upbringing probably didn’t tell you, but I want you to come away knowing that there’s people in the scene who care about you, who want you to be there and who are concerned that your story and your presence is missing from the scene. If anybody wants to talk to me about anything in that regard I’m listening. I’ll answer your email, I’ll respond to your DM or whatever.”
Southampton Insurrection is out now via self-release.
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